#and it feels kind of isolating

[asphodellic]

loss is such a strange thing.

i spent a lot of my teenage years and my adulthood wishing my mom would just disappear. she'd yell at me or cuss me out or call me fat or tell me i was nothing, and i just wished she would be gone. i thought about how much happier and better my life would be without her.

i remember my first year of college, i got really sick. the flu was going around because of all the new germs, and everyone in my freshman dorm got hit hard. i remember walking to work in a fog, and i remember my boss asking me if i was okay and saying yes. then i remember her giving me a task, and i couldn't understand what she was saying because i was so out of it. so she sent me to the health center, and i had a 103 fever. it was going down, so they sent me back to my dorm. i called my mom to tell her i had the flu, and she told me it was my fault because i didn't wash my hands enough. my roommate's mom sent her a big care package. my friend's mom came to the school to bring him stuff. i just dealt with it on my own until i was better.

that's been my whole life, pretty much. dealing with stuff on my own until it got better. i was never coddled or doted on. i had food and shelter and stuff for school, and that was supposed to be good enough. i got hit and screamed at, and no matter how good i did in school or how low under the radar i tried to stay, it was never good enough.

it got worse when she got sick. then it was death threats and constant screaming, and when i got out of her house, it felt so good to be able to ignore her. to not return her calls. to tell my dad no when he asked if i wanted to talk to her. it felt like i finally had some control over things.

but there was a part of me that always wanted things to get better. that would hope that maybe one day she'd become the mother i always wanted. the one i saw glimpses of sometimes when we would have rare good days together. when we'd sit on my parents' bed and watch pretty woman or ghost or whatever romantic 80s/90s movie was on tbs that sunday night. those nights were like getting a glimpse of what it could be like.

it never lasted, though. monday would come, and it would be right back to the yelling and name calling.

i wanted her gone for so long. and now she is.

i didn't feel that much when i found out she was dying. i was shocked, i guess, because she always seemed like a monolith. like something that was unshakeable. i cried a little at the memorial, when my brother spoke because it felt more real then. i cried when song lyrics reminded me of her.

tonight, i wanted to watch pretty woman because it's always been a comfort movie for me, and this week has been pretty rough. these last several months have been pretty rough. and i guess i didn't realize how much of that movie is wound up in feelings about my mom now. i didn't realize how much it was going to make me think about her.

i cried through the last hour or so of it, just missing her. missing the good times. missing that little glimmer of hope that maybe one day things would be okay. they never really were okay, and now i guess they never will be.

[gummi-ships]

Kingdom Hearts 3 - Scala ad Caelum

[mari-lair]

Isolated stargazer fun fact: The researcher's memory is worse than traveler Siffrin, one of the first things he did after touching Isabeau's face and 'seeing him' was to carve the image on a piece of wood. He isn't very good at carving but they used refined wishcraft to make sure the image is perfect. They tend to be very responsible when using wishcraft but he really really doesn't want to forget the face of his friends.

[positivelyadhd]

reminder that making time for your friends, even when you're tried and socialising feels overwhelming is important to do every so often. it's especially important to do this actually.

time alone can be good, for a time, but humans are social creatures and we need to talk to people, there's nothing wrong with that!!

sometimes the more time you spend alone the more your brain will tell you to stay alone. that's not true, you're allowed to (and should!!) see people that are important to you. sometimes that alone can be surprisingly healing.

[camellia-thea]

i know we talk a lot about the isolation of chronic illness and disability, but i really don't think ablebodied folk get it.

i have made one new friend in person since graduating highschool in 2020. she is my housemate's girlfriend. she stays over frequently, and the only reason we are friends is because she stays over and we have shared university papers. i would not have had the opportunity to befriend her otherwise. that is in the space of three years.

i don't go out much. i cannot guarantee that i will leave my house within any given week. technically i have class i need to go to twice a week for an hour, but those moments aren't time for friends, they're time for classwork and i don't interact with people in a social capacity there.

i simply do not get the opportunity to meet people.

i cannot go out with friends and meet new people that way, because my social circle is already so small, and i don't have the energy to go out half the time anyway. when i do, i suffer for it later.

i don't meet people on campus because i'm immuno-compromised, and ableds seem to have forgotten that we are still in a pandemic.

i don't go to clubs or go out for the sake of going out because i can't. i've grown agoraphobic, because i am so worried that something health related will happen and i'll get stuck somewhere alone. i hate leaving the house because of the guarantee of an anxiety attack which leaves my body more likely to flare. it's a vicious cycle of isolation.

i am not the only one who has experienced this -- i can still leave the house, i can still go and visit friends with assistance. i struggle, but at the end of the day, it's still an option. there are others who are completely isolated.

the worst of it is that people leave. people get tired of the 'i can't come, i'm sorry', of the 'hey, i'm sick, can we postpone?'. even people who you love and hold dearly will stop trying. and it's awful. you have to sit and watch these people who you love walk away because they can't deal with your disability. i don't have words to describe how much that hurts.

it really is impossible for ablebodied people to understand, because for the majority of us, this isn't temporary. this is just how we have to live. and your social circle can only really get smaller.

[radiantmists]

so murderbot assumes that three offered its armor because it doesn't understand that the armor can belong to it and thinks mb taking the armor is just good resource allocation.

but if it assumes it doesnt have control over the armor, it would probably let whoever it sees as in charge (maybe ART?) handle it, or at least make the suggestion directly to that person. even newly freed in NE, it's willing to give its security advice (on hostage situations being undesirable) even if it doesn't expect to be taken seriously. it doesn't make sense to me that it would have so much trouble expressing the offer if it were just a security suggestion.

and then i think about how murderbot says later in the book that even if three felt fondly toward its fellow SecUnits, the govmod would prevent it from expressing that care or knowing it was returned.

so-- imagine you're three, and you havent yet internalized that you can just say "i care about you and dont want you to get hurt" to another SecUnit; but you can make sure that it has every resource it might need; you could probably do that even before the govmod was hacked.

you can't explain why, but you can hope that the gesture is explanation enough, and you can look for similar caretaking gestures in return; things like being given code and advice to do your job better, and being reassured when you express that you're finding said job difficult.

i think *murderbot* isn't aware of this language of care, because it hasnt had much opportunity to bond with other constructs. but three probably is, and probably knows how to read between the lines and guess that murderbot is starting to care about it, too.

[dwynwenscottage]

Out of curiosity, what’s everyone’s main reasons for loving Gilmore girls / re-watching? What was it about the show that made your brain go ‘I must watch this perpetually, for my whole existence and dissect in depth its themes’

Also, when did you start watching?

[non-un-topo]

More cishet observations from the past month at work:

- They really fucking buzz off of the TERF wizard book series

- Their favourite place on Earth is Florida (why???)

- If you tell them you're an artist, they will ask you if you've ever "tried out AI"

- They will joke about OCD a lot

- They absolutely hate their bodies and will take any opportunity to talk about food in a toxic way (bonus points if they compare their body/food to yours)

- They hate their spouses and think that this is funny

- They. Do not. Have interests. (Besides the TERF wizard book series)

- They don't watch movies or TV??

- If they have kids, the way they talk about them makes it sound like it was genuinely the worst decision they ever made

- If they don't have kids, they will still fucking talk about having them

- They don't like cats??

In other weird news, I'm gendered correctly at work and I pass to the point that cishets actually talk to me like I'm a cishet guy.

[podcast-hemocytoblast]

I think something that often gets overlooked about the Lonely is that it isn’t just the fear of being rejected, abandoned, and unloved.

It is that, but it’s also the heavy sense of dread that settles in your bones when you realize that whatever danger you’re in, you have to deal with it on your own. It’s the realization that no one is around to hear you scream and that no one is coming to save you. It’s the feeling of calling emergency services (911, 119, etc.) and asking the operator when help is coming, only to be told that no one is coming, because they’re all tied up on other calls right now, so it may be another hour or so before anyone gets to you. It’s the visceral terror you feel when you finally realize that the help you need is never going to come, or if it does, they won’t be there until it’s already too late for you. It’s realizing that you’ll never see your loved ones again, and wondering if anyone will ever find your body, if anyone is going to care that you’re gone, if anyone is ever going to find out what happened to you, if anyone is even going to realize that you’re dead.

[hsfavoriteworlds]

I've been sitting on my feelings about this show for a couple of days now and I can't stop thinking about how lonely Yeong is. Nothing captures his self-inflicted loneliness quite like those small moments in episode 7 when he’s with the T-aras. When they are comforting Eun Su and then head to the hotel room, you see him just hang back, silently observing and slightly confused as the T-aras walk ahead and/or barge into the room while he stays behind for a second or two. It hits you then—you can feel the weight of his solitude, this deep sense of loneliness that goes beyond his romantic life. It’s all in how he carries himself in those moments that are supposed to be chaotic and fun, how he’s not walking in step with them. It's a constant reminder of how he isolates himself even when surrounded by his closest friends, and that just.... hurts.

[kinokoshoujoart]

the coolest kids in forgotten valley!!☆

(…it seems there may have been a stretch of time where rock and lumina were the only kids in forgotten valley…🥲)

poseref

[qoldenskies]

I feel like April and Mikey commiserate over constantly being underestimated and ‘protected’ by everyone else for being human/the youngest.

Speaking of, I find it king of interesting (any annoying, if I’m being honest) how much Raph, Leo and Donnie do baby Mikey. Like, he’s less than a year younger than Leo and Donnie, and only in Rise, so it’s not like he needed that much more protecting than anyone else

tbh i think them babying mikey makes sense. the gaps in age really arent that huge but it defines how they function so much because it was a system they fell into in order to protect themselves, especially in the face of splinter's neglect/depression. like raph stepped up as a pseudo-father figure most obviously, but you can see how this effects leo too. advocating for mikey to have independence, questioning raph when he thinks he's being unreasonable and acting as counsel for him, saying he's an undecided voter and putting emphasis on the importance of his input at the beginning of one man's junk, cheering them all up when their motivation is damaged, etc. and you can see it in the way that donnie and mikey operate, too; it's very rare they try to take the lead. even when donnie questions leo's guidance, you dont actually see him directly challenging it or trying to reroute much. he just goes along with it, even if he doesn't think its a good idea (you can see it most in the movie lol, without raph there leo is The Oldest and that's why donnie and mikey just follow him even though he's being shitty).

and mikey's at the bottom of the ladder here as the very youngest and it shows!! they never PUT anything on mikey, and because all of them have these Roles, mikey's the one that needs to be sheltered and protected the MOST. raph is the most obvious about it but you can see it with the middle children sometimes too lol. it means mikey trusts them wholeheartedly, even if the babying gets to him sometimes-- he never uses i'm only a year-two years younger to argue because he doesnt live in a kind of dynamic where he'd see that as a small gap. leo KIND OF does in hot soup: the game, but its more like "when you were his age" which is NOT the same thing. raph is thinking of the dynamic more than he is the actual ages; mikey was never saddled with the kind of responsibility he was. he's the littlest. that's what matters.

[decepti-geek]

tbh an important part of my take on the 'don't be like Sentinel' question is that hours earlier D16 had very decidedly assumed leadership of the High Guard, after which any attempt at resolving his very understandable personal trauma via murder was also, on a wider affects-everyone/your-new-power-means-something scale, inherently going to count as a military coup.

yknow. the thing Sentinel did to assume power/hand it over to the quintessons in the first place

[waketoearth]

20 POSTERS FOR JUNGWON'S 20TH !!!

[yvesdot]

Showerthought of the day is that it is always incredibly low-hanging fruit to dunk on people who find solace in chatGPT/character.ai/Replika/insert-chatbot-here because you are pretty much just saying, "oh my God, imagine being such a friendless weirdo that you actually feel something when a robot says it to you because you never get to hear it from humans you're a friendless weirdo! Oh my God what a freak! What a weirdo! What a socially ostracized person!"

Yes, exactly. Your point is...?

[sorren-sews]

endling in repose